The Trump administration’s attempt to block international students from attending Harvard University was a sharp escalation in the showdown between the federal government and one of the nation’s oldest and most powerful institutions.

It also showed how the younger side — the government — is the one with the upper hand.

Harvard has won praise for fighting back, and many legal experts believe the law is squarely on its side. But the administration holds the levers of power, and is methodically and creatively using them in a take-no-prisoners assault on the school.

To cut off the university’s pipeline of international students — who make up about 27 percent of Harvard’s enrollment — the government has turned to an obscure tactic it usually uses to shut down shoddy diploma mills.

“I was dumbfounded,” Ted Mitchell, the president of the American Council on Education, told me. “What’s becoming increasingly clear is that this administration will use any tool that it can.”

A federal judge has already blocked the move for now, but my colleague Michael Schmidt, an investigative reporter who has been covering every twist in this story, tells me the damage may already be done. Today, he explained just how dire Harvard’s predicament has become — and why the federal government’s power over the nearly 400-year-old institution is even greater than he had appreciated.

JB: You have long covered the way Trump has used the power of the government to target his perceived enemies. How is this time different?